Twice had Goruba made his way into the fort; twice had he escaped. Yet on neither occasion had anyone seen him on the ramparts, nor had anyone seen him in the interior except Challis and the man who had now been wounded. What puzzled Royce almost as much as the secret of Goruba's means of entry and of exit was the fact that he seemed to make no use of it. Being able to get in and out without being observed, why did he not make use of his power, and lead his followers into the fort? "I wish Tom were here!" thought Royce. "I feel like Robinson Crusoe before he had Friday to talk to. John is the only Hausa at all equal to Friday. I almost wish they had not gone." Next morning he set the men again to work on the ditch, and went through the fort from corner to corner, searching for some secret passage. The gaps in the walls had all been filled up. The stone slabs of the floor all seemed to be solid; none of them gave forth a hollow sound when he stamped on them. At the bottom of the well the spring bubbled constantly, the overflow passing away through a narrow slit through which a rabbit could hardly have crawled. "It beats me altogether," he said to himself after his thorough survey. He walked round inside the wall to see how the men were getting on with the ditch, and came to the foot or two of brickwork which had been uncovered. "I wonder!" he exclaimed, as a sudden thought struck him. "Gambaru, fetch me the spade." When the man returned, Royce began to dig away the earth on each side of the brickwork, which was itself too hard and to firmly imbedded to be cut into or prised up by the only tools he possessed. He found, after some little time, that the brick-work was about four feet wide and very deep, and that it extended inwards. Dropping the spade, he walked into the fort in the same straight line as the brickwork. "This may be the clue," he thought with some excitement. "At any rate, I must see." The direction of his walk led him straight to the well. "A false scent," he said to himself, more puzzled than ever. He went back to the ditch, to make sure that he had not been mistaken in his course. No; there was no doubt, about it; he felt sure that if he uncovered the brickwork completely it would end at or near the wall of the well. Just as he was beginning to dig again, another idea occurred to him. "It would take me a couple of hours to clear all the earth away," he thought. "Perhaps it would be waste labour. I'll have another look at the well." He returned, Gambaru following, much puzzled at his master's strange proceedings. Standing on the brink, he peered down into the well, which was wide and fairly light. He had seen nothing extraordinary about it when he supervised the clearing out of the rubbish; there was nothing extraordinary about it now.